Introduction to the Resume/Brag Sheet
Article Type: Quick and Dirty

In essence, a brag sheet is simply a resume.

A 50-year-old woman changing careers is bound to have a very different sort of resume or brag sheet than you will. Matter of fact, so will a 23-year-old college graduate heading out into the world. (Notice we didn’t say “scary wild world where you’ll be competing with a cast of hundreds for the same job.) As a teenager, your resume will—and should—look and feel different from one where you’re trying to land a job.

A brag sheet is also very useful to have when you’re asking for letters of recommendation from teachers, coaches, and other leading adults in your life. It lets everybody have a peek into the human that is you (so please wear clean underwear). When you’re applying to colleges, most of them want to see things other than your stellar (or perhaps less-than-twinkly) GPA. What’s in your heart? What are your passions? What do you do after school and on weekends? Are your vacations simply for sleeping in? All of this goes into your brag sheet.

Key experiences that colleges are going to be looking for include:

  • Volunteer work.
  • Leadership positions.
  • Involvement in music and the arts.
  • Clubs.
  • Cultural experiences.
  • Honors and awards.
  • Community service.
  • Employment. Even if you worked summers at your dad’s commercial seating company, include it.

You should still make sure those grades are included here, but in a perfect world (and let us just assume, for the rest of this paragraph, that it is, indeed, perfect) you’ve been keeping track of every extracurricular activity, sport, club, travel time, volunteer service, etc. since ninth grade. It sure would be a lot easier to write this brag sheet thing if you have…It’s not the time to be skimpy or overly humble. (That being said, some colleges do verify these so do be honest.)